2010 US-Canada Merge
The 2010 US-Canada Merge '''was a planned merge of Habbo Hotel US and Habbo Hotel Canada. By early April 2010, Sulake planned to merge habbo.com and habbo.ca together into one universal website which can be accessed by both URLs. Since the release of the news story about the merge, there has been very heavy criticism. However, in the late aftermath of the merge, criticism began to diminish, although there are a few that are still opposed to it. Overview On January 20, 2010, both Habbo CA and Habbo US published the following news story http://www.habbo.ca/articles/1300-attention-habbos, headlined as "Attention Habbos": '''We have an important announcement for all Habbos in North America! We are currently preparing to go a lot bigger in North America with thousands of new people for you to meet and make friends with! Coming up in early April Sulake will be merging the Habbo.com and Habbo.ca sites into one. What does this mean? Well, not much will change, meaning all your rooms, friends, furni, pets etc. will of course stay intact. The big change will be that you'll have a lot more people to meet and have fun with! If you have any questions please read the FAQs here, and if there's a question that hasn't been answered please post to this forum thread - we will be reading it all the time and updating the FAQs with answers to your questions! A group, called "Habbo.ca and Habbo.com Unite" was created with information about the merge. A thread was created on its forum allowing players to ask questions about the merge that are not covered in the FAQ's. A possible theory is to why Sulake is merging CA and US together is because of finicial problems regarding Habbo CA. If the merge doesn't happen, Habbo CA may be forced to close down because of low traffic and profits, and the high costs of keeping the hotel up. 2 days after publishing the first news story, a second one was released http://www.habbo.ca/articles/1307-habboca-and-habbocom-unite containing more information. On January 29, 2010, Habbo CA and US both released a poll about the merge. This poll asks various questons about the updates and suggestions that would make the merge better. This is the first poll and more are scheduled to come. According to unconfirmed sources, the merge is planned to start on April 16, 2010. On April 15, Habbo released a news article saying they will, yet again, push the date further http://www.habbo.ca/articles/1477-cacom-together-as-one, to next week or the week after. On April 30, a news article was released saying the merge will be pushed http://www.habbo.ca/articles/1497-cacom-update. The merge may finally start some time during the week of May 2 or 9th. Along with the news, a survey was also conducted about the merge. Community Response : Main article: Criticism of the 2010 merges When Habbo announced the merge, the majority of the community was highly opposed to it. Many people wrote on the hotel managers' guestbooks protesting the merge. There has been rumours that CA manager Puffin will be talking to the managers of the project and questioning them about the merge. There was also major controversy regarding the planned date of the merge. It was mentioned that the merge would start in early April. Players questioned the fact that it could be an April Fool's Joke. Username Changes Some people on Habbo CA and US have the same usernames. Because of this, people may have to change their usernames. This particular rule sparked the a lot of the criticism. However, as said in the FAQ, the most active player will be most likely to keep their username, however this may not be entirely true. It might be confirmed that because of the same usernames, Habbo's may be required to use emails to sign in rather than Usernames. Whether email confirmation is necessary is yet to be confirmed. Banned accounts will NOT encur name changes, even if someone with the same name from a different hotel is more active then the banned account. The Merge The merge started at 6:00am–8:47am central time on May 5, 2010. Both hotels were on maintenance break before the merge. When the merge came, Habbo Canada transferred to Habbo US, and any URL from Canada would redirect to US. Habbo Staff released a news article saying the merge finally came and some additional information http://www.habbo.com/articles/1611-two-became-one. The news article also explained that groups from Habbo Canada have yet to be transferred to the US database, and may take a couple of weeks until groups migrate. Names and descriptions may be incorrect, and shall be fixed in a few days. Finally, minimails from CA are still missing, but will return soon. Prior to the merge, Habbos from Canada must first activate their account. During activiation, the player's possessions is transferred to the new database, in cluding badges, furni, guestbook entries, and friends. Habbos who have yet to activate their account are shown as a skeleton and a "Page Missing" page is shown when another player attempts to visit their page. When players first enter the client, they'll receive a gift. After the gift has been opened, they must reload the hotel to get the badge. The badge is determined by which hotel the player originates from (US Habbos get the US badge; CA Habbos get the CA badge). As of July 16 Canadian groups haven't merged. See also *2010 English Hotel Merge *Timeline of the 2010 merges External links *FAQ section about the merge (habbo.ca) *News story announcing the merge (habbo.ca) *"Habbo.com and Habbo.com Unite" group (habbo.ca) *Second merge poll (habbo.ca) Category:Updates Category:2010 merges Category:Major events